


Lessons Learned

by thedevilchicken



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clothed/Naked, Dysfunctional Relationships, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Identity Porn, Ignores Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Internal Conflict, Lightsabers, M/M, Morally Ambiguous Character, Obsession, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Seduction to the Dark Side, Top Luke, Uncle/Nephew Incest, Walk Into A Bar, less than stellar parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 08:54:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12955722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Ben Solo walks into a bar. His uncle Luke doesn't recognize him.Things can only get worse from there.





	Lessons Learned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thymesis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thymesis/gifts).



> This is an expansion of another fic of mine, [Lesson One](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12771903). Ben is in his twenties when he's sent to Luke for training following a somewhat misspent youth.
> 
> Written while entirely spoiler-free for TLJ, and ignoring a lot of current non-movie canon (explicitly ignoring _Bloodline_ , for instance, while making up huge chunks of backstory). 
> 
> Please don't come looking here for Luke being an unambiguous good guy - he's the morally ambiguous character I'm tagging for, not Kylo!

Luke turns and leaves the room, but Kylo won't leave until morning. 

He won't follow him, but not because he doesn't want to. He won't because he can't.

\---

It started before training even began and he knew he shouldn't do it even while he was doing it. Still, when he realized he hadn't been recognized, he just couldn't help himself.

He sat down at the bar in the rundown spaceport - not the worst place he'd ever been in his life but not exactly the best, either - and he expected dear old Uncle Luke to know him. He guessed he'd thought maybe his parents had shown him pictures or holograms or whatever else they had that might have looked like him, _something_ in the years since Luke had last seen him, but it turned out he must've been wrong because Luke just looked at him for a moment with a faint hint of a polite smile before he looked away again, back to his food. It wasn't a smile of recognition. All those years of missed meetings when Ben was busy with school, taking field trips, away on vacations, avoiding family reunions maybe out of some youthful sense of rebellion...he was older now and Uncle Luke didn't know who he was.

Maybe he should've been irritated by it. He guessed he was, underneath - wasn't he important enough for his parents to share him with his only uncle? had Uncle Luke been too caught up in his Jedi adventures to give a damn about his only nephew? - but that settled down under a thin layer of amusement at the general situation. Luke didn't know him. He wasn't due to meet him there for another week, after all, more like ten days, and he hadn't called ahead to let him know he'd ended up angry enough at the senator that he'd walked out and taken the trip early; he'd hitched rides on cargo ships, traded labor for a bunk on one ship then a second then a third to get himself there instead of taking the charter ship the senator had arranged for him. As far as Luke knew, he was just another traveler looking for a drink. Maybe some food. Maybe some company. In places like that, everyone was looking for company.

That was when the idea struck. He knew he shouldn't, he knew it was the stupid, borderline absurd kind of trouble that the senator was worried he'd keep on getting himself into, the kind of thing that was the reason she'd sent him to his uncle for training in the first place, except it was obvious Uncle Luke didn't know him and he just couldn't help himself. It was perfect. Really, what else was he supposed to do?

He ordered a drink and fidgeted with the gouges in the worn old bartop as he waited for it, glancing at Luke every now and then, deliberately. He sipped his drink while Luke finished his food, ordered the same for himself and took his time, glancing at him every now and then as he ate. Luke ordered a drink; Ben ordered another himself and he glanced at him every now and then as they both drank. He was obvious about it. He was _very_ obvious, like he didn't mean to be but couldn't help it. He wasn't subtle. Luke couldn't have helped but notice, and he was almost sure he'd been watching, in the mirror behind the bar, in the reflections in the shiny bottles, in moments when Ben looked away, maybe even in the Force since it was reportedly so strong with him. And then, finally, Ben cleared his throat. That wasn't subtle, either.

"So, do you come here often?" Ben asked, peering sidelong at Luke as he sat there astride his high barstool, heels scuffing the footrest, almost like he'd spent his time there at the bar gathering the nerve to speak.

Luke glanced at him just long enough to confirm he was speaking to him and then he turned his head to him. 

"From time to time," he replied, guardedly. He folded his fingers together around his glass, one hand gloved one not. Ben watched.

Looking at him, Luke was older than Ben remembered, but that made sense considering how much time had passed since he'd last seen him in the flesh. His hair was longer and grayer and Ben had grown up, and grown taller, but somehow it was Luke that seemed bigger than he'd used to and not the other way around. The senator liked to talk about her brother as if he was more legend than man sometimes, like he was the perfect embodiment of all the old Jedi virtues - Ben had never believed that, but in that moment he did seem strong. He seemed self-assured. He seemed to know himself and his place in the universe in a way that Ben didn't and never had. He envied him that.

"I haven't seen you here before," Luke said.

Ben turned a little more, angling his shoulders toward him, leaning casually against the worn old bar though the surface was faintly tacky to the touch and the fabric of his sleeve stuck to it unpleasantly. It was a hole-in-the-wall kind of place in an out-of-the-way spaceport town so he hadn't expected a diplomatic dinner and dazzling service, but he would have liked not sticking to the hardware. He preferred this, though, when he thought about it, but it was a marginal thing.

"I'm between flights," he said. "I'm just passing through. One night only."

"It's honestly more unusual to find someone who's here to stay," Luke replied.

Ben smiled. He dragged his fingers through his hair, pulling it back out of his eyes though it fell straight back into them, and he watched Luke watch him do it. He watched Luke's gaze move over the muscle in the side of his neck, down to the hollow at the base of his throat just over the collar of his coat. It was the sort of place that people went for company, after all, and even the high and mighty Luke Skywalker wasn't made of stone like some kind of Jedi temple. But then Luke took a sharp breath and he stood himself up abruptly.

"I should go," he said, and he started to do just that, but Ben pushed up to his feet and he caught Luke's arm. He caught his wrist - his _real_ wrist, not the metal one still hidden by the glove. Luke flinched.

"Don't," Ben said.

Luke frowned down at the hand around his wrist, then he frowned up at Ben. "You're Force-sensitive," he said.

Ben smiled what he hoped looked self-consciously. "If you say so, but I don't know what that means," he replied, then he shuffled in closer to him, glancing around almost like he was checking to see who might be watching them. He leaned closer, almost by Luke's ear, fully aware he was taking it too far but he just didn't care, he was having fun. "But if you want to _force me_ , I'll let you."

Luke snatched his wrist out of Ben's grip. He took him by the shoulders, his metal hand clamping down almost painfully, like he didn't know his own strength with it but Ben was absolutely sure he did. For a moment, before he reined it in, Uncle Luke looked dangerous. He looked like he could've reached into his chest and yanked his heart straight out with that metal hand, bared his teeth and ripped out his throat, burned him to ashes on the spot just with the heat in his eyes, if he'd just had a fraction less restraint. The senator had talked about him like he was a mild-mannered, spiritual man. What he was seeing didn't fit; what he was seeing was so much more than that. It made him tense. It excited him. He's still not sure how it didn't scare him.

That was the moment Ben knew he'd made a mistake because Luke's presence filled the room. People turned to look. He'd been sent so Luke could teach him that, that restraint that covered something darker, something wilder, not to get him to direct it at him. The problem was, it was thrilling. 

"Not here," Luke said, and he turned away abruptly. His long cloak swept a circle against the dusty floor and he looked back over his shoulder, brows raised. "Are you coming?"

He shouldn't have. He should've laughed it off and said _surprise!_ and told him who he was, acted like it was a really funny practical joke that he'd just played before things got really out of hand, because he told himself that was how he'd planned it. But he didn't laugh it off. The way Luke looked at him, dark and hot and not peaceful like the senator had always said the Jedi were, like she would even know - he couldn't do it. He nodded yes, the motion small, almost apprehensive. And when Luke headed for the door, he followed.

They didn't step into a speeder and head out to the temple like Ben had thought they might, but he guessed that made sense given what they were doing. It was dark outside and the moon was out but he could barely see it over the bright street signs and the landing lights of the ships taking off or coming in. The streets of the rundown, backwoods spaceport were bustling with travelers and shouting food vendors enveloped in clouds of pungent steam, familiar old-time jizz music spilling out from a cantina down the street though he couldn't make out enough of it to remember the name of the band. It was like a million other places where he'd done other stupid things and made other stupid mistakes, though he had a feeling this time was just about to be the worst.

Luke strode away and Ben jogged to catch up and they walked together, briskly, side-by-side, Luke dodging the pedestrians in their way like they weren't even there and Ben apologizing his way down the street as he crashed into every third person. His chest was tight and his heart was racing and it wasn't just from the crowd or the noise or the drinks he'd had back in the bar. Luke led the way, surely, straight up to the door of the boarding house where Ben had checked in maybe three hours earlier. Ben frowned. He figured he'd been caught red-handed, at least maybe he had, but then again maybe not. For a second he was sure Luke knew, but then he wasn't. He wasn't sure at all.

"How did you know this is where I'd be staying?" he asked, feeling the situation out as they stood just outside the door, under the hovering streetlight.

"You really want to know?"

Ben nodded. Luke stepped in closer. Ben stepped back against the wall behind him.

"You don't have a ship of your own and there are three boarding houses on this side of the spaceport," Luke replied. He took a handful of Ben's jacket with his human hand; he leaned against the wall with the other. "You're dressed too well for the first one. You're Force-sensitive, and that would've warned you away from the second."

Luke leaned in. Ben swallowed.

"Invite me in," Luke said, his breath hot at the side of Ben's neck. It made his stomach clench. He clenched his fists, his nails jabbing his palms, resting his head against the wall. He'd taken this too far. He should've known better, he thought, except he _had_ known better and he'd done it anyway, but the really stupid part was he didn't actually want to stop. He wanted to see how far it would go. He wanted to see if Luke knew. He wasn't sure if he hoped he did or he didn't.

"Would you like to come in?" Ben asked. His voice wasn't steady, as much as he tried to level it, and he _did_ try.

"Yes, I would," Luke replied.

They went inside. Luke held the door and Ben led the way, down the hall past the scowling Toydarian at the desk, under the harsh lights that made Luke look older and harder but that really wasn't anything like a deterrent as far as Ben was concerned. Luke's cloak brushed the floor and his lightsaber hung from his belt and suddenly he was everything the senator had said he was, upright and upstanding and totally confusing, like they weren't walking down the corridor of a near-disreputable boarding house in a less-than-upstanding part of a busy spaceport town. He looked like a Jedi, even knowing what they'd gone there for.

Ben unlocked the door to the room. They went inside. Luke didn't turn on the light; he activated his lightsaber instead, with a buzz that made Ben flinch and tense instinctively, and he stood it on its end on the desk by the wall, seeming precarious to Ben but Luke didn't seem concerned. It cast a green glow in the dark and over both of them as they stood there, over the scuffed thermaplast floor tiles and the neatly made bed.

"What do I call you?" Ben asked, maybe just for something to say, to break up the unnatural hum of the lightsaber.

"Luke," he replied. He stepped closer. He pushed his cloak back over his shoulders and let it drop to the floor behind him, at his feet. He flexed his hands, casting mismatched shadows on the tiles. Ben took an unsteady breath. "And you?"

"You can call me Kylo," Ben said. 

He hated the way his voice sounded, so stiff and anxious and right on the edge of needy. This wasn't the lighthearted, embarrassing prank he'd intended to play, like it would make up for how the senator was taking another turn at running his life for him and Uncle Luke had agreed to help. His hands felt cold. His throat felt tight and the way Luke's face looked in the flickering green light of the lightsaber, he knew he'd taken this too far. If Luke was playing the same game he was, he'd won the moment he'd stood up back in the bar, but Ben didn't know. He couldn't tell and he'd always been able to tell before - but maybe that was the Force that everyone said was in him, and Luke was just that much stronger.

"Take off your clothes," Luke said, and Ben's cock stirred. He hissed in a breath. And he almost said it right then - _Luke, I'm your nephew_ \- except he didn't say it. He unzipped his jacket and he slung it over the back of a nearby chair. He toed off his boots. He pulled off his shirt. He couldn't tell if he was playing chicken or getting ready for sex and he frankly wasn't sure which option he preferred except he took off his pants next, he stripped until he was standing there naked, his bare skin bathed in low green light and the buzz of the saber in his ears. He didn't know what he was doing but he knew he didn't want to stop.

"On the bed," Luke said, his voice sounding lower somehow, gruffer. "On your back." So Ben did that. He stretched out on his back with his head on the starchy pillows and he tried not to notice how his cock started to stiffen up in earnest. He tried to seem nonchalant about it but he wasn't and he failed. He could barely stay still. His hands took two fistfuls of the sheets beneath him and he looked at Luke who knelt on the foot of the bed, who crawled up higher, still in his boots and pants and tunic, whose clothes brushed roughly against Ben's bare skin and made him shiver. Luke knelt between Ben's thighs. He rested his hands against them, glove discarded on the floor, and Ben wasn't sure if it was the warmth of his skin or the chill of the metal that made his cock fill harder.

Luke turned slightly. He gestured with one hand, his human hand, and a bottle of something spun out of his dropped cloak and sailed through the air with a sparkle of green light on glass till he caught it deftly. He seemed to consider his next move for a moment then unstoppered the bottle and dipped one finger inside it; it came back slick and shining with whatever the bottle's contents were, maybe something for the joints in his metal hand, maybe something else, maybe meant for this, but as Luke eased Ben's knees out a little wider with his metal hand, he knew. Luke's real hand moved down, Luke pushed up Ben's knee, and when his slick fingertip brushed against the rim of his hole, he knew. He reached up with both hands to grab the headboard tight and the jarring realization bubbled up inside him: Luke didn't know. _Luke didn't know_. He had no idea what to do.

He had no idea what to do, so he did nothing. He watched Luke shift, pulling at his tunic till his cock was exposed and he should have stopped it, he should have stopped it so long before then but stopping it then would have still worked, stopping it then would have made sense, but he didn't stop it. He felt his cock bob in air as Luke's hands hooked underneath his knees and he should have _stopped_ him but Luke shuffled closer, Luke slicked the length of his cock with the back of Ben's bare thigh resting against his clothed chest, Luke stroked himself with a soft, slick sound in the low green light and then it was too late for him to stop because Luke guided the tip of his cock down between Ben's thighs and up against his hole. 

He inched forward and Ben's breath hitched and his hands pulled down hard at the headboard as he felt it, Luke's slick cock pushing into him, penetrating him, slowly. He hadn't let anyone else have him like that for at least a couple of years, not since screwing around with a couple of flight school students with bad reputations right up to the brink of a low-level scandal, and it hurt, vaguely, the same way it always had to start with, except he'd been laughing out loud the last time, half-drunk and half-taunting. He wasn't drunk and he definitely wasn't taunting as the head of Luke's cock pushed inside him, then more of it, then _more_. He pushed into him in silence broken only by their breath and the low, electric hum of Luke's lightsaber.

Luke was still on his knees. He fucked him like that, on his knees, fully dressed, pushing up Ben's thighs to expose his hole and make his entry easier. He was stronger than he looked, Ben thought, as he felt himself give, as he felt Luke's cock open him, or maybe he was just using the Force to make it seem that way, and Luke bared his teeth, his breath harsh as he moved in him. Ben tingled with it, knowing how wrong it was, hating it, regretting what he'd done but wanting it anyway as Luke's hips snapped against him, pushing in deep, making the flimsy bed beneath them creak. Ben pushed down against him, made Luke groan as he took him deeper. Luke laughed breathlessly. He fucked him harder, his slick human hand going down to wrap around Ben's cock. He stroked him. He made him groan, too, somehow not quite ashamed.

It wasn't over quickly; it might have been easier if it had been but it wasn't. Confusingly, it wasn't. Luke pulled out of him at some point and pushed him down on his hands and knees and then he was back in him again like that, his metal hand pushing down between Ben's shoulder blades as he drew back right to the tip then pushed back in. He pulled out, he re-entered with just the head, he pulled out, he penetrated him over and over just like that till Ben's hands were almost tearing at the sheets and the mattress muffled the way he almost screamed with frustration at it. But then Luke was in him again, his tunic rubbing maddeningly against the back of his thighs, and he stroked his own cock, pulled at it, overhand, bucking back against him as his long hair stuck to his face and neck and the lightsaber hummed and hummed till his head was full with the sound of it.

Luke came in him. He finished with a few final jerks of his hips, erratic and not the deep, hard, measured pace he'd kept before - Ben could feel it, not just the throb of Luke's cock inside him but in the air around them, like a crackle in the Force between them, just for a moment, lighting up every nerve in him in a kind of jangling pleasure. He came from it as Luke's hand closed over his, emptying himself over Luke's fingers, over the sheets. He could hear his pulse in his ears. His chest heaved with his breath. Luke's hand squeezed his cock and he kept the last shred of his dignity intact by muffling his whimper against the mattress instead of out loud into the dark room. He should have known better, he thought, but he _had_ known better; he should have paid closer attention to that fact, he thought, but he wasn't sure if he regretted it. Not yet, at least. He'd wanted Luke since the bar, since he'd grabbed his wrist. He'd wanted that power he'd seen in him. He'd wanted to see where that could lead. It had led to this.

In the end, Luke softened inside him and then he finally pulled out. Ben turned. He sat back against the headboard and he looked at him in the green glow that wasn't nearly enough to really _see_ him with his back to it the way it was, at least not past broad strokes, not more than the general shape of him as he rearranged his clothes, tucked himself away and then left the bed. Ben tried to follow but Luke stretched out one hand and held him right there with the Force, pinning him to the headboard. He retrieved his lightsaber, he took it in his hand and then he came back, he straddled Ben's bare thighs, one knee at either side, the toes of his boots digging into the mattress. He brought the saber closer. He laced his metal fingers into Ben's hair and he pulled back his head. The glowing green blade came in not quite an inch from his throat and gleamed in Luke's eyes.

"This is your first lesson," he said. "Don't play games with me, Ben."

He knew. _He knew_.

Ben's stomach lurched. Luke deactivated the saber and plunged them into darkness. He kissed Ben on the mouth, his fingers still tangled in his hair, stealing the air away from in him, and Ben was kissing him back in the pitch black before he could help himself, pulling at Luke's tunic, clawing at it, desperate, sick, maybe furious or maybe entertained or maybe both.

Then he felt him move; he saw his silhouette in the light as the door opened; he left him in the dark. All he could do was laugh as Luke's footsteps faded down the corridor.

His training had started. It turned out Uncle Luke was everything the senator had said he was, and more besides.

\---

When he arrived at the temple the next morning, it looked deserted from the outside. 

He'd been thinking maybe Luke would meet him at the steps when he got there, or that _someone_ would if not the great man himself, but there was no trace of anyone. No one answered when he knocked at the huge wooden double doors at the entrance to the imposing stone temple, beating with his fists at the thing that was almost twice as tall as he was and probably about four times his weight, or maybe more. He couldn't see anyone when he pushed the doors open and walked inside, either, but at least at that point he could hear them.

He found them in the large open courtyard just to the rear of the centre of the temple, in the shadow of its high dome, each one of them holding a lightsaber in their hands. And there was Luke with his own saber at the front of them all, that familiar green glow ten times fainter in the sunlight. No one looked at Ben as he walked in, though he wasn't exactly discreet about it, and he dumped his bag on the dusty ground by a cracked stone wall that a huge tree's roots seemed to have been growing through for the last hundred years and he sat himself down to watch and wait. The only Jedi he'd ever met was his uncle, after all, and if this was what he was going to do with his life - for the moment, at least - then he needed to know what he was up against. 

He glimpsed something out of the corner of his eye roughly fifteen seconds later and barely caught it as it sailed through the air in the direction of his head. When he looked at it, it was a lightsaber, scuffed and worn and clearly older than he was himself but it looked newly serviced and maybe even ready to use. He looked at Luke but Luke didn't look at him; he just pointed his own saber to an empty space beside one of the students, a tall human female in a plain beige robe, and Ben understood the instruction so he threw his jacket down over the top of his bag and he left it there to join them. He guessed that was lesson two: always be on your guard, you never know when your lunatic master might throw something at you.

When class was over almost an hour later and he was sitting back there on the cracked wall, dripping in sweat and wondering exactly what it was he'd agreed to, the other students came over to introduce themselves; Luke vanished into thin air before Ben could attempt to talk to him and he had no idea where to find him, so he went along with it. Some had been there almost as long as Luke had, they said, some had been there just a couple of years and then everything in between. They were all kinds of ages and from all kinds of planets - apparently Luke had eschewed Jedi tradition and taken on students from young teens to adults twice as old as Ben was, though there weren't exactly hundreds of them gathered there so he had to wonder if their differences were exaggerated because of that. But they seemed welcoming enough, even when they explained that the master had told them who he was before he'd arrived. There was an implication there that he hadn't been chosen the way they had, that he maybe wasn't as deserving of the training as they were, and he couldn't say they were wrong because he knew they weren't. He hadn't been chosen. He didn't even try to deny it. In a strange way, they seemed to respect that.

The temple wasn't exactly a heaving metropolis, it turned out, not that Ben found that fact surprising. A couple of the students showed him around, up and down winding stone staircases that climbed up into towers and looped down into the ground, popping out into huge vaulted halls or small spaces that Ben couldn't figure out the use for. It was vast and cold and full of drafts and echoes, and they'd cleared out most of the junk left by previous non-Jedi occupants but they told him they only used parts of it, like the kitchens and the sleeping quarters and gardens. A couple of them showed him to his room - it was practically empty, just a bed and a desk and a chair, with sheets and a change of clothes sitting folded on the mattress waiting for him. It seemed peaceful. They seemed pleasant, even if some of them seemed vaguely competitive. And, once he'd changed into his new clothes, tugging his tunic this way and that, when he wandered the place alone at last, Luke was nowhere to be found.

His training went slowly. He found out the next morning that there were group classes arranged by the students' level of advancement and as he was a complete novice, most were off-limits to him. The first few days were full of frustration, no idea what he was doing, relying on the other students' good will, and Luke was avoiding him though he guessed he understood that. He'd done something incredibly stupid and he wasn't sure if it was possible to make it right, though honestly he wasn't sure if he wanted to. He went to bed at night three nights in a row thinking about his Uncle Luke in ways he'd never exactly expected to. Fucking his uncle was officially the worst thing he'd ever done. He wondered if it was even close to the worst thing Luke had.

Six days of fruitless floundering later, Master Skywalker assigned him a mentor: a Twi'lek girl who couldn't have been more than fifteen years old, and he honestly wasn't sure how not to take it as an insult. The problem was, she was good - she knew exactly what she was doing and she'd been there for almost five years by then, she said, learning, because Master Skywalker was a great teacher, and she promised she'd show him everything she knew. But he hadn't left the core and gone all the way out there to learn from a girl instead of the master. It made him angry. He knew that wasn't a very worthy emotion for a Jedi, but he didn't feel much like a Jedi at all. Putting on the tunic hadn't worked any kind of ancient magic, but he wasn't about to be defeated. Apparently stubbornness was a Skywalker family trait.

So, he worked hard. He learned, even if Master Skywalker barely even spoke to him, barely even looked in his direction. He studied the holocrons and read the books in the temple's huge underground library, late at night, until he couldn't keep his eyes open. He ran in the woods every morning, rain or shine, and improved his stamina and his endurance. He worked for weeks, months, taught himself the skills he needed with the other students' help and moved into ever more advanced classes where Luke ignored him just as much as he had before. It turned out he had a certain aptitude. That was probably a Skywalker family trait, too.

He told himself he understood what was happening. Luke probably hadn't wanted him there in the first place and even if he had, the situation had taken a left turn into the fucking surreal so his reaction to Ben's presence there made perfect sense. The problem was, Luke had apparently told the others that he treated Ben differently because they were blood relations and that he wouldn't play favorites because of that; the problem was, not playing favorites would have meant treating him just like the others - no better, no worse - and Luke did didn't even come close to that. He could even have understood veering in the opposite direction and pushing him harder than the others, expecting more from him, but as far as Luke seemed to care he could have spent his days drinking in a spaceport bar instead of training and it wouldn't have concerned him. He hadn't learned a real lesson in months. So, he worked by himself, apart from the others, and ended each day aching right down to his bones with exhaustion, and with disappointment. 

At first, that disappointment was with himself: he wasn't living up to expectations, he thought, so he tried harder and he worked longer and he told himself he'd make Luke pay attention like he did with the others. But as the weeks turned to months and his skill grew, he realized his disappointment was in Luke: he was progressing in spite of him, not because of him. But he still couldn't get him out of his head and the fact that every time Luke left the planet, it was always someone else that he took with him. It was always someone else's turn, flying, training, discussing what they'd seen in a holocron, and never his. So he decided: if he couldn't make him pay attention to his growing skill, he'd come at it another way. There were other ways to be noticed; he'd already proved that before.

He watched him. He studied him. He paid attention to everything he did, concentrating as much on Luke as he did on his own training. And then he had it: every few weeks, Luke went out to the town alone. His presence there that first night hadn't been a one-off thing.

The next time Luke left, Ben followed him. He put on his old clothes, the ones he'd arrived in, and he followed him down the leafy forest paths from the temple, through the woods and into the spaceport with its bright lights and noises that he was surprised to find he hadn't missed at all. He sat down next to him on a stool at the bar. 

"So, do you come here often?" he asked, straining to tamp down his frustrations, and Luke looked at him like he was trying to decide what the intention was, what Ben was doing there, what to do for the best. He made him wait. Ben was impatient; the wait got under his skin; the wait burned in his blood. Maybe that was Luke's point.

"From time to time," he replied, at last, his decision apparently - finally - made. His tone was stony but not cold.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

"I have one already."

"Then after that."

"I'm not staying."

"Then leave with me."

Luke frowned. He stood. He turned to him. "What exactly are you saying?" he asked. 

"You know what."

"Don't play games. Say the words."

Ben stood. He stepped close, his plans suddenly seeming downright foolish in the face of this. 

"Go to bed with me," he said.

Luke fixed him in his gaze. Luke stared and made him feel three inches tall, but the look was hot and dark and made Ben's chest feel tight. Luke reached up and twisted his metal fingers into Ben's long hair. There were eyes on them from around the room. Ben wasn't sure if he felt thrilled by that or utterly ashamed. 

"Not here," Luke said, hotly, leaning up by his ear. "Come with me." Then he turned and left. 

It was the same shitty boarding house as before that Luke led him to, not the same room but it might as well have been considering how different it wasn't. Luke exchanged credits for a key with the Toydarian at the desk with very few words, like it was a regular agreement and maybe it was, Luke picking up a new traveler every two or three or four weeks and taking them there to spend the night with him. As they strode down the corridor, Ben wondered what Luke was like with them; did he smile, did he tell jokes, did he tell them who he was and what he did? That seemed somewhat unlikely, but Ben knew he didn't really know him at all. As Luke opened the door, Ben wondered what the people Luke picked up were like; were they men, were they women, human, something else? Did any of them look like him? Had he had them before him or after? He wasn't sure he even wanted to know.

Luke activated his lightsaber and set it on the desk with that same eerie glow instead of just turning on the light. Ben guessed it was atmospheric, in a way. 

"Take off your clothes," Luke said, and there was no doubt in Ben's mind that he'd do it but this time it was different. He knew Luke knew who he was. Luke knew he was his sister's son and that just made it better and hotter and then again ten times worse when Ben took off his jacket and toed off his boots. It made it awful and exhilarating as he stripped himself naked and abandoned his clothes on the floor with Luke's eyes on him, moving over him. 

"Kneel," Luke said, his voice rough, and Ben did it without hesitation. He went down on his knees on the scuffed thermaplast tiles, sat back on his heels and looked up as Luke threw off his cloak. Luke stepped forward; he rearranged his robe and pants and drew out his cock, still soft, and let it hang. 

"I think you know what to do," Luke said, and he did know, he couldn't have denied that if he'd wanted to and he didn't want to, not at all. So he took Luke's flaccid cock in his hand and he pressed his mouth to it. He held it tight and stroked it, slowly, easing back the foreskin to show the head below and he pressed his mouth there, too. He licked it, teased the slit in the tip with the tip of his tongue, and he felt Luke start to stiffen. He felt him fill up hard, long and thick just like his own so maybe that was another family trait they had in common, and he took the head into his mouth and sucked. If nothing else, he had Luke's attention. But then Luke pulled back, his cock shining wetly in the lightsaber's green glow. 

Luke used the Force to move him, one hand stretched out - it felt familiar from training but then context was everything. Luke brought him up off his knees and he shifted him across the room like he weighed nothing, like moving him was nothing. He pushed him down face first over the desk, the Force like an invisible hand planted there between his shoulder blades, and for a couple of minutes after that he didn't even touch him. He didn't use his hands to part Ben's cheeks. He didn't use his fingertips to push at his hole. That wasn't his fingers opening him up, exposing him, making his cock so hard it throbbed against the desktop. It wasn't really Luke until it suddenly was and then his oil-slicked cock was pushing up into him and Ben groaned out loud at the feeling of it, stretching him out wider, filling him up. 

Luke's hands gripped his torso, as he fucked him, tight over his ribs. Luke's metal hand dug in, a little too hard, maybe hard enough to bruise, but Ben found he wanted that with a jolt that went straight to his cock. He wanted there to be evidence left behind, something he could see in the mirror in the morning, sparse as they were in the temple, and know Luke was really there. Luke came inside him not long after, pushing in one last time as deep as he could go, then he told him to touch himself and so he did. He jerked at his own cock with one hand as he leaned there still bent over the desk, with Luke still hard in him, pressing his cheek to the table, and in the glow of the lightsaber so close by he could see his breath fog on the cold metal desktop. He came like that, his skin flushed, his legs unsteady, squeezing around Luke so tight it almost hurt, bucking back against him like he could maybe take him deeper after all even though that seemed impossible. The sound he made as he did it wasn't pretty but he guessed nothing about the situation was, from the location to Luke's semen in him to the fact he was fucking his uncle. 

Then Luke pulled out. He teased at his hole just a few seconds longer, pushing just the head of his cock back in, once, twice, three times, before he stepped away and tucked himself back in. Ben turned to him, leaning back against the hard edge of the desk, and as Luke came closer to retrieve his lightsaber, Ben almost held his breath. Luke leaned past him. Luke leaned up against him. Luke's warm breath against his shoulder made him shiver. 

"I enjoyed this," Luke said, his mouth moving against the side of Ben's neck. "I didn't expect to see you here again." 

"Maybe I'll look you up again next time I come out this way," Ben replied. 

Luke paused. Luke had his lightsaber in his hand and he deactivated it with a buzz, leaving them in darkness. 

"Do that," he said, his voice close in the dark, and then he left him there. The door clicked closed behind him and Ben sat down on the bed, raking his fingers through his hair. He didn't know what he'd expected - maybe some kind of weird admonishment or a lesson like the last time, or maybe nothing at all - but he hadn't expected that. 

Still, the invitation was open. And honestly, in spite of everything, in spite of himself, he thought he might just take him up on it. 

\---

It happened again three weeks later and again three weeks after that. 

Ben paid even closer attention to the master's comings and goings, his trips offworld and his trips away from the temple, until he knew what to look out for so he could follow when the time was right. He'd meet him in the bar and they'd eat together sometimes, sometimes have a drink, but more often than not they went straight to the boarding house and had the bored Toydarian manager sign them in - he signed his name _Kylo_ in the registry while Luke paid, then they continued down the corridor together. Then Luke had him, however he wanted to, wherever he wanted to, on their knees on the floor, face first against the wall, pushed up against the glass of the coated window that they could see out of though no one could see in. He remembers coming against the glass, imagining everyone outside was watching them. He almost wanted them to. Maybe he actually _did_ want them to. 

It went on for months - six months, nine, a year, fucking in the familiar green glow of his distant master's lightsaber then making his way back to the temple where he knew he'd all but be ignored. But that was fine because he knew Luke's secret. That was fine because when he looked at the others, he could see he was the only one their master had more than the appropriate level of engagement with. Maybe the others caught his attention with their exemplary meditation practice or their thorough reasoning or their extensive knowledge of the work of the old masters, but his thoughts were always divided and never fully theirs. When Ben was with him, his bare skin against his master's robes, he was the only thing Luke saw. He was certain of it. The only problem was, he wanted more. He always did. He always had. He didn't know how not to. 

Sometimes he wondered what Luke would do if he confronted him. He wondered what his response would be if he went to him and said _you've been fucking me for a year now, Uncle Luke. Do you think you can stop calling me_ Kylo _when you're in me?_ Sometimes he wondered what he'd say if he challenged him with his lightsaber, just so he could be the center of his attention at the temple for once and not just in a shitty spaceport boarding house, but he knew all that Luke would do was walk away. They'd never even crossed swords, not even once in all the time he'd been there, eighteen months, almost two years, not like he did with the others sometimes, when they sparred. Luke barely even looked at him, let alone trained him, but Ben guessed that was still training of sorts. He learned not to trust his master the way the others did, though he doubts that was the point. Lesson three: he learned to be self-reliant. 

And then, one afternoon or at least he supposed it was afternoon though the temple library had no windows to see daylight through, the Twi'lek girl came to find him. She said the master was leaving and he wanted Ben with him. Frankly, she looked as surprised by that as he was - the master's complete lack of interest in or involvement with him hadn't gone unnoticed by the other students. But he grabbed his cloak, he deactivated the holocron he'd been studying and tucked it into his pocket just in case the journey was a long one, and he headed to the ship. 

"Master," he said, as he joined him in the cockpit of the small transport ship they kept there at the temple. Luke gave him a brief nod of acknowledgement as he pressed the button to retract the boarding ramp and seal the airlocks, and Ben took the copilot's seat there next to him. He hadn't been in a ship with Uncle Luke since he was a boy, he thought, probably seven or eight years old, when he'd taken him up and shown him what an A-wing could do, albeit a training ship with a dual cockpit. He still thought about it sometimes, the twisting and turning, banking and falling, the dizzying climbs and then the vastness of space at the end of the sky. He remembered how he wasn't scared because Uncle Luke was the best pilot he knew, because he was the best pilot his mother knew and she knew a lot of pilots, though sometimes his dad and Uncle Luke and sometimes General Calrissian or Admiral Verlaine had friendly arguments about that. But in that moment, he remembered Luke Skywalker had been his hero. Sitting in the transport ship more than fifteen years later, somehow that still didn't seem unreasonable.

The takeoff from the temple landing pad was much more sedate than the A-wing launch had been, and Uncle Luke - _Master Skywalker_ \- didn't say a thing. Ben knew better than to ask where they were going, though it felt strange not to know. Besides, it was the first time they'd been alone together outside the seedy little spaceport since he'd arrived. It was exciting, in a low kind of way. His mind took him to all kinds of places they might go to - another temple? another planet for supplies? was it finally time to find a kyber crystal so he could build his own lightsaber? Except, four hours down the hyperspace route, he understood exactly what was happening. 

"When were you going to tell me?" he asked. 

Luke glanced at him, then back out into space through the viewport. "I wasn't," he replied. 

"Do the others get to go home?"

"No."

"Then what's so special about me?"

Luke just turned in his seat and looked at him for a moment, as if he might actually summon up the words to answer the question he'd been asked, but then he stood and walked away. 

"Watch the screens," he said, over his shoulder. "Call me when we reach the Hosnian system." Ben knew better than to follow.

They were cleared to land at the senate complex on Hosnian Prime just under an hour later. Ben wasn't sure if he felt resentful that he'd been tricked or strangely amused but he didn't have much time to think about it; Senator Organa was there to greet them when they landed, with Threepio grumbling beside her and a new assistant who Ben didn't know striding along behind. The senator threw her arms around him like she'd missed him - he guessed she had - then fussed with the front of his robes. 

"You look handsome in these," she said, patting the folds flat. "You look well. Are you well?" She turned briskly to Luke. "Is he well?"

Luke smiled. Luke _smiled_ , and Ben was half surprised his face didn't crack open considering his usual temperament, then he moved just far enough to gather the senator into a hug. 

"He's well," Luke told her. "Should we go inside?"

They senator nodded. "Let's go in," she said, linking arms with both of them, one either side of her. "Dinner should be waiting."

Dinner was waiting, as were Ben's father, Chewbacca freshly in from Kashyyyk, and former chancellor Mon Mothma who was visiting from Chandrila. Ben could see what was happening; Chancellor Mothma was there because the senator hoped she'd keep the peace between her and General Solo, not that he liked to be referred to that way, and she was probably right about that possibility. The only question was exactly how long it could last. 

Ben was mostly quiet through dinner, after Chewie had clapped him on both shoulders so hard he felt three inches shorter in a familiar kind of Wookiee greeting and his dad had hugged him so hard his ribs creaked and told him he hoped he was keeping out of trouble, like Han Solo even knew what keeping out of trouble meant. He made polite conversation with Chancellor Mothma while he watched the senator and the general both talk a mile a minute at his master, at _Luke_ who was sitting there between them, who smiled at them both like he was different person to the one Ben knew and seemed to take it all in stride. It felt as much like Luke's homecoming as Ben's. Maybe more, but his parents had always been like that even when they'd tried not to be, even when they were doing their best. He knew not to expect any different. Two years away hadn't changed a thing.

"They both love you very much, Ben," Chancellor Mothma told him, in a low voice, following his gaze across the table, and he smiled tightly and said he knew because he did know. He just didn't say he also knew how much they loved their jobs, or how often he'd been left alone in schools and senatorial daycare centers, wondering if his parents knew what he was learning about, who his friends were, what he liked to do. They'd moved every few years when the senate moved, Chandrila, Nakadia, with so many visits to so many places that they were all mixed up together in his memory. But where they were then, Republic City on Hosnian Prime, was the last place he'd called home before Master Skywalker's Jedi temple. He thought his things might even still be in the room down the hall where he'd slept on the rare occasions when he'd bothered coming in, if the senator hadn't converted it into a library or given it to Chewie. Chewbacca might have been living on Kashyyyk then but he was probably there more often than Ben was, so he couldn't say he would've blamed her. 

The night wore on. The general started telling war stories with loud interjections from Chewie and Chancellor Mothma yawned discreetly then excused herself to bed, so Ben did the same and left the four of them there reliving the glory days though that started to turn to the usual arguments even as he was walking away. It turned out his room was the same as he'd left it, just a little tidier - bed newly made, clothes clean and pressed and hanging in the closet, datapads stacked neatly on the desk. It was as bare as he remembered - you got used to travelling light when your mother was a senator. Maybe that was why the temple's empty rooms hadn't felt like he was making too much of a sacrifice. 

He hung his cloak over the edge of the open closet door. He took off his boots and stood them up neatly by the desk. He took off his belt and he took off his robe, took off his shirt, folded them all and set them down on the chair across the room that matched the rest of the elegant decor. His thoughts felt more cloudy and disordered than they had in months, so he sat down cross-legged on the floor to meditate in the low light from the lamp by the bed, the way Luke had taught the Twi'lek girl who'd taught him. 

It wasn't long till the door opened and Ben opened his eyes. Luke stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Ben could hear his parents' raised voices down the hall; he'd always told himself he was used to that but the truth was it still stung. The meditation hadn't had a chance to help. Luke could probably see that. 

"It's not about you," Luke said, as Ben looked up at him, and Ben's mouth twisted wryly though he couldn't have called it a smile. 

"It never is," he replied. His fingers pressed down hard against his thighs as Luke looked down at him. 

"They were always like this," Luke told him, gesturing vaguely back in their direction, like that made any kind of difference. 

Ben sighed. He uncrossed his legs and stretched them out, then he went up on his knees instead. He sat back on his heels, his meditation apparently over for the night. He was tired and he was frustrated and he'd just wanted some time alone to clear his head, not this, whatever this was. He barely recognized this stranger in a Skywalker suit standing there dispensing platitudes. He was used to the stonewall, or a dark room filled with the electric hum of a lightsaber. He was too worn down to decipher this. He hadn't wanted to go home.

"Are you here as my uncle or as my master?" Ben asked. 

Luke frowned and said, "Neither," but that wasn't much of an answer. Ben scrubbed his face with one hand, ran his fingers through his hair and tugged there, hard. 

"What other option does that leave?" he asked. 

"I don't know."

He smiled bitterly. "That's not good enough," he said.

He rocked backwards and pushed up to his feet and Luke watched him with his hands slowly balling into fists and suddenly Ben could see he was _so_ like the senator who was still out there arguing with his father in the dining room. Luke was hot-tempered, short-tempered, emotional, but he kept it restrained, and that was what Ben had wanted for himself that first night in the bar. He'd wanted to be able to be calm like his Uncle Luke was. Right then, all he wanted to do was tear Luke's calm apart to see exactly what was hidden underneath. 

"Did you fuck my mother?" he asked. 

"What kind of a question is that?"

Ben shrugged, spreading his arms out wide. He wasn't calm, not even close. 

"A relevant one," he replied. "I think so. Don't you?"

"No."

"No what?"

"No I didn't."

"Didn't what?"

"I didn't sleep with my twin sister." He huffed out a breath, frowning hard, and Ben could feel his frustration and confusion and so many other things besides in the air between them, in the _Force_ between them. "How could you ask me that?"

Ben caught the waist of his own pants with one thumb and pulled down, baring one hip, one _bruised_ hip, the lines where Luke's metal fingers had been just a few days before still so dark they were almost black. Luke stared.

"It seemed important," Ben said. "All things considered."

"Did I do that?"

"What do you think?"

For a moment, Luke just looked at him, at the dark bruise over his hip that it still hurt to touch, his expression veering close to stricken at the realization he'd done that, he'd done that _to him_ , and he hadn't even noticed at the time. Maybe it was that, or then again maybe he was thinking about how far they were from that spaceport boarding house and how close he was to admitting something they'd never said out loud, not after that first night, because they'd been playing make-believe like Ben's real name was _Kylo_. Maybe he was thinking that the two of them being there together was a huge mistake and calculating vectors to escape from it.

Then he stepped forward. He stepped in close, with a click of his boots on the oh-so-tasteful, probably highly overpriced tiled stone floor, and he stretched out his metal hand to fit his fingers to the bruise. He squeezed lightly; Ben winced, but that wasn't to say he minded. It reminded him of how he'd got the bruise in the first place.

"I think I did that," Luke said. 

"You did."

"I think you wanted me to."

"I did."

"I think you're goading me."

"I am." Ben lifted one hand, cautiously but not hesitantly, and ran his fingers into Luke's long hair. His chest was tight. His heart was hammering. "Is it working?" he asked.

Luke paused. Luke looked at him, closely, considering the question, the situation, Ben's hand in his hair, fingers against his scalp. 

"Yes," he said. 

Luke's metal hand went up to Ben's hair and he pulled him down into a kiss. He crushed their mouths together and Ben's hands went to the small of Luke's back, his shoulders, his hips, all the places he'd never felt able to touch before, as Luke rested his forehead against his, took a breath and then kissed him again. It wasn't chaste. It was hot and hard and Ben's pulse raced, but he pulled back. 

"Take off your clothes," Ben told him, impulsively, and Luke looked at him like he was weighing his options, deciding if he should stay or go, if he should turn around and leave him there or if he was the kind of man who could fuck his own nephew when they could still hear his parents arguing down the corridor, through the thick bedroom door. Ben honestly wasn't sure what he'd decide, and he watched the confusion on Luke's face harden into something else as he made up his mind. He took off his robe and as he watched him, Ben realized he'd expected him to go. He watched him undress, off guard, his stomach shot through with gnawing, fluttering anxiety, and Luke didn't look any calmer than he felt, either. Neither of them had expected this. Neither of them had thought this was the man Luke was, not really, not faced with the reality of the situation, but Ben guessed only one of them was pleased by that revelation.

Luke was already hard by the time he was naked, his cock standing up long and thick and flushed between his thighs. Ben was hard, too, and he pushed down his pants, let them fall to the floor so he could step out of them. Then he touched him. He stepped up to Luke and set his hands on his bare shoulders, looking him in the eye just for a moment before he ducked his mouth to the flushed side of his neck. Luke let him do it. Luke let him press his mouth to his collarbones, let him step around behind him, let him brush his backside pseudo-accidentally with the tip of his cock as he pressed his mouth between his shoulder blades, no idea what he was doing. He came back around and took Luke's metal hand, brought it up, kissed his metal fingertips and his metal palm, his metal wrist. He ran his fingers over the place it met the warm skin of his forearm and Luke shivered. When he kissed him again, mouth to mouth, when Luke's hands dipped down to the curve of his backside, he shivered too.

They moved to the bed. Ben went down on his back and Luke followed him; Luke stretched out over him, on top of him, knees between Ben's thighs and propped up on his forearms. Luke kissed him and it was incredible, lying there, his breath short, his eyes closed, as Luke's mouth pressed to the hollow between his collarbones, to the crook of his neck, to the pulse in his throat. Then Luke pulled back. He sat up on his knees. 

No one had touched the fingerprint-locked drawer by Ben's bed in the time he'd been gone - he'd left it just as it was so it would scandalize whoever broke in, but it seemed like no one had. Luke leaned past him once it was unlocked and he rummaged through it with the Force rather than with his hands, lifting things out and turning them in the air, holding them there while he searched with a quirk of his brows and a flush in his cheeks. Ben wondered if Luke was imagining him using those things and maybe the people he'd used them with - cuffs, a blindfold made of dreamsilk, flexplast film and an array of toys, plastiform and glass and metal, some thick, some thin, some long, some short. He thought maybe Luke would use one on him, slick it up and fuck him with it, with his hand or with the Force, maybe the metal one that he kept up in the air a little longer than most, but he put them all down and took the flexplast and the lubricant instead. 

Ben watched him wrap the flexplast around the first two fingers of his metal hand, eyes wide, brows raised. He watched him slick them with the lubricant and felt his cock twitch a fraction harder in response. He lay back and Luke eased up his thighs, eased his knees apart, exposing him, then he rubbed his metal fingertips up against his hole. He pushed them in. Ben muffled his groan of completely obscene enjoyment against one bicep as he reached up to grip the headboard to steady himself. 

Luke fucked him with his fingers. He fucked him slow and deep and utterly unrelenting and Ben pushed down against them, taking them as deep as he could as he felt himself squeeze around the length of them, again and again. He knew they shouldn't be doing it - was the bedroom door even locked? - but there they were and Luke pulled back, tore off the flexplast and slicked himself instead. He did it quickly, fumbling, cursing under his breath like he couldn't wait to be in him, like he wanted it just as much as Ben did, like he wanted _him_ , like he was a normal person living a normal life with no powers at all. He guided the head of his cock up against Ben's hole and used his thumb to nudge it into place, then he pushed himself into him. He used his human hand to cut off Ben's groan, his mouth against his palm, and somehow that just made him harder. 

Ben wrapped his legs around Luke's bare waist as he fucked him, linking his ankles at the small of his back. He gripped at his bare shoulders as he moved in him and Luke's eyes were on him, no green glow from the lightsaber this time to hide that they were blue. Luke wasn't angry then the way he usually was when they reached the boarding house and he looked older in the lamplight, more real somehow than usual, and Ben wanted that, he wanted _him_ , and he leaned up to kiss him, making him go still inside him from the awkward angles they had to bend at. All he could feel in the Force was waves of how much Luke wanted this. It was almost overwhelming. He could've come just from that if he'd let himself, he thought, no idea what had changed since they'd arrived but wanting it anyway, but then Luke sat back on his heels, still in him. Ben knew what he wanted without him having to ask. 

Ben wrapped his hand around his cock. He squeezed. He stroked. It should have been embarrassing, maybe, and maybe in part it was, touching himself like that while Luke watched, but the naked desire on Luke's face made it worth it. No one had ever wanted him like that before, he was sure of that, and his swiped his thumb over the head of his cock, dipped his other hand down to rub at the place where Luke's cock entered him, his rim stretched taut around him, and he came like that, tightening around Luke, muscles shifting, clenching his jaw to keep from calling out loud. Luke needed nothing else; he came in him, jerking with it, the suddenness of it taking them both by surprise. It wasn't a bad surprise. He wouldn't have minded more like it.

Luke took a shaky breath, fitting his metal hand to the bruises there that were still dark over Ben's hip, looking like he meant to say something, but he just pulled out of him instead with a sort of self-deprecating half-smile that made Ben wonder what he'd been like back when he was his age and not more than twice it. Then he stretched out next to him on the bed, on his back. Ben turned his head to look at him, in profile in the lamplight. 

"Stay the night," he said, on impulse, and he waited for Luke's excuses not to but he didn't give a single one. He turned instead, nudged Ben onto his side and pressed his chest up to his back. He wrapped one arm around Ben's waist. He laced his fingers between Ben's, metal against skin. 

"Okay," he said. 

He stayed. 

\---

In the morning, Luke was still there. 

He was sitting cross-legged in the chair across the room, pants on and shirt untucked, quiet and relaxed, reading one of the datapads from the desk. Ben had been thinking about joining the academy before the senator had made contact with her brother, thinking about training as a pilot - a real one, not the seat-of-your-pants, wing-and-a-prayer kind his father was, but he'd thought about doing a lot of things over the years and had basically followed through on none of them, restless and frustrated as he was. Thankfully, Luke didn't say a word about the guide to the academy entrance exam he'd picked up. He seemed to find what he was reading at least a little entertaining but when he saw Ben move, he put the pad back down where he'd found it. He looked at him. He didn't say a word, so Ben didn't either, but somehow it didn't feel like the same kind of silence as before. 

They cleaned up in the en suite bathroom after that, and apparently the senator's staff had thought of everything because the toiletries were new and the towels were fresh. They ate breakfast in the dining room and Chewie and the general grabbed their food to go on their way out the door, apparently keen to get back on the road for whatever idiotic plans they'd put together; Luke looked at Ben almost sympathetically as the door closed, maybe because he thought Ben expected more of a goodbye than _I guess we'll see you out there, kid_ as the general ruffled his hair just as obnoxiously as ever, or maybe he was just plain sorry Ben had Han Solo for a father. Ben, however, was used to both those things. Besides, Han Solo was a better father than some, and no worse than most.

Then, the senate was called into emergency session and the senator and her aide swept away with a brief but sincere apology for her absence - her apologies were always sincere, no matter how regular they were. She left them there alone, Chancellor Mothma gone to pay a few long-overdue visits, not even a droid to keep them company since Artoo was out keeping an eye on the ship.

"She'll be gone all day," Ben said, listening to the apartment door close from his seat at the dining table, not particularly surprised to find nothing had changed while he'd been away. The general still cut and ran at the first sign of trouble and the senator was still the busiest woman in the whole Republic.

"I think we can look after ourselves while she's gone," Luke replied. "Is there anything you want to do while you're here?"

Ben considered that. He thought about the places he'd used to go and the things he'd used to do and he couldn't think of a single one of them that had really interested him at the time, let alone right then. So he stood. He tapped the lightsaber hanging from his belt. 

"I want to find a place to practice," he said. 

Luke nodded. "I have an idea," he replied. He patted his mouth with a napkin and the pushed back his chair. "Come with me."

They gathered their cloaks and they left the apartment, left the senatorial complex and walked together through the city. Ben had an idea where they were going but he kept his thoughts about it to himself and they unsurprisingly didn't speak much along the way, following the long, straight roads, taking their time because it wasn't like the senator would hurry back. The weather on Hosnian Prime barely ever fluctuated more than a couple of degrees, thanks to the control systems they had in place, and they hadn't arrived for a designated rain day; the skies were clear and the air was warm so Luke walked with his cloak folded over his arm and Ben threw his over his shoulder. And maybe most of the people there had never seen a Jedi before but they'd seen outfits ten times stranger than theirs, so they blended right in. 

Then there they were, strolling into one of Republic City's largest parks, full of trees and plants and jogging paths and open air spaces set aside and fenced apart to hire for activities. There was a group of people kicking a ball around in one, a group of martial artists training in another, a painting class under an awning in the next. Ben watched, amused, as Luke rented a vacant space at the booth and charged it to Senator Organa, then they went in through the locked gate with the keycard Luke had just received. Luke took a seat under a huge tree on the well-trimmed lawn, apparently intending to meditate. Ben left his cloak by the tree, stretched and then ran through a few short exercises that didn't require his lightsaber, just warming up. Then he took out his weapon and ignited it with a buzz. A few heads turned, not that he paid much attention to it, but when Luke stood and dropped his cloak and drew his own saber, glowing green, that made Ben pause. 

"Would you like to practice with an opponent?" Luke asked. 

Ben raised his brows. "Are you asking me to fight you?"

Luke shrugged. The look on his face was almost a smile. "That's one way to look at it," he said.

So Ben lifted his lightsaber and they fought. The space wasn't huge but it was more adequate than the senator's small balcony and they ranged around it, Luke quicker than he ought to have been and Ben spurred on by the fact Luke was engaging with him at all. The way Luke moved when he fought wasn't like the way he moved at any other time; he was faster, more agile, an economy of movement that Ben admired but didn't have the skill to emulate, but then Luke started _teaching_ , knocking Ben off guard with it, nothing verbal but the way he moved was so clearly an instruction for Ben to follow. So he did. The two of them really did turn heads. They drew a crowd. 

And when they were done, Ben flat on his back on the grass with his hair splayed out, Luke standing over him with the point of his lightsaber so close to Ben's throat that he was almost afraid to swallow, Luke thumbed off the blade and held out his hand. Ben took it and Luke pulled him up. They were close together, Luke's metal hand still almost too tight around Ben's wrist. They were _too_ close together. 

"We should get back," Ben said. 

Luke nodded tensely. He let go. They retrieved their cloaks, dropped off the keycard and left. 

They walked back, not quite dragging their feet. Most people know about the Hanging Gardens in Republic City but Ben had always preferred the Winter Gardens; the planet's controlled climate manufactured a comfortable year-round summer, but the Winter Gardens were cold under their biofields. They pulled their cloaks on then pulled them tighter as they walked side by side in the snow that swirled in the air and crunched underfoot, and Luke told him about Tatooine, growing up on a moisture farm, wishing he could be anywhere but there. There was no snow on Tatooine, Luke said, and when he'd landed on Hoth and almost frozen to death, he'd gone from one extreme to the other. His whole life had been a lot like that, he said, bouncing from one height to the other, and from anyone else that would've sounded laughable. Coming from Luke, it made a lot of sense. 

They each took a quick shower when they returned to the apartment, separately though Ben couldn't help at least thinking about asking Luke to join him, wondering what he might've said if he had. Then they changed, Luke into something he'd had stowed on the ship that made him look more like a smuggler than a Jedi and Ben into old clothes from his closet that hung looser than they had before so he pulled his belt in a couple of notches. 

They made lunch together in the kitchen. Everything was still where it had been before he'd left so he pulled out knives and pans while Luke raided the supplies. They moved around each other seamlessly, strangely effortlessly, then ate on the balcony and spent the afternoon out there in the sunlight, Luke tapping away at a datapad and Ben with the holocron he'd brought with him. Sometimes, when Ben looked up, Luke was watching him over the top of his pad. He didn't look away, at least not immediately.

The senator bustled back in with Chancellor Mothma as the sun was going down outside and they all went out to dinner with Senator Casterfo. Ben kept out of conversation as much as he could and Luke kept looking at him, just _looking_ at him, like he could see right into him, and Ben didn't know how no one else noticed. He didn't know how Luke was even doing that when back at the temple he'd barely glanced in his direction. He liked it, he wanted it, but he didn't understand it.

"Is he talented?" Casterfo asked, never one to mince words. 

"He's the most talented student I have," Luke replied. And Ben just concentrated on trying not to frown at him over the tabletop and their plates of excessive food because Luke had never talked about him like that before. Luke had never commented on his talent or lack thereof. He'd never said anything about his progress. Then the conversation moved on. The evening moved on. Ben tried to pretend nothing had happened at all, let it sweep him along, the political discussion letting him stay quiet. Then they went back to the senator's apartment, and they all went to their rooms.

It was past midnight when he left his own room and went to Luke's. He let himself in and he crossed the tiled floor to the bed where Luke was sitting, leaning back against the headboard as he read from a datapad in the light of the wall lamp, Luke's eyes on him and not the text as he dropped his shirt and shucked off his pants as he went. As surreal as the experience was, he'd made the decision to go there and pursue it, and see where it led.

"We can't keep doing this," Luke said, as Ben settled astride Luke's thighs. He didn't have to say why that was, because that much was obvious, but he also didn't tell him to leave. He put the datapad down on the table by the bed. He settled his hands lightly at Ben's hips. 

"Did you mean what you said at dinner?" Ben asked. 

Luke met his gaze. "Yes," he replied.

That was all Ben needed. They shuffled down the bed and he pulled down Luke's pants to mid-thigh and he rode him, his hands spread out over Luke's clothed chest. When they both came, somehow it felt like the right end to the day; he went back to his own bed when they were done, but he didn't for one second believe Luke wasn't thinking about him.

\---

Ben didn't think it could last but it did. Three more days passed that way. 

They said goodbye to Chancellor Mothma who left to go home to Chandrila and the senator spent the majority of her time arguing with colleagues in the senate building, in their offices or hers, something political blowing up sooner than expected that Ben wanted no part of. He and Luke practiced in the park or they meditated instead and then walked back to the apartment through the snow, down the boulevard that linked the gardens with the senator's apartment building. He was genuinely surprised when, on the third day, she made enough time in her busy schedule to go to a light lunch with them in the afternoon before they all had dinner with yet another senator that evening. It was all the things he'd hated about life as a politician's son set side by side with the strangest relationship he'd ever had in his life. He didn't know what to make of it.

He didn't know what to make of _Luke_. In the daytime he was the teacher he'd expected but never had and at night he was something else. At night, he came to Ben's room and pressed his mouth to his, touched him, made his heart race, made his cock ache, took his time and made him come, and honestly, Ben was surprised by how much he liked him, this other Luke. He was surprised by how much this Luke seemed to like him in return.

The first night, he went back to his own room. The second and third, Ben asked him to stay so he stayed. Then, the fourth day, Ben was still naked from the night before when he pushed back the sheets and sat himself down at the edge of the bed. He sat there, in the morning sunlight and not the dark sometime past midnight, with his bare feet on the chilly floor and his knees spread out. Luke watched him from the chair across the room, calmly, his hands resting on his thighs, and Ben ran his own hands over his own thighs, down the insides of them, feeling like a total idiot but doing it anyway. He raked with his nails, leaving livid red lines behind, and Luke raised his brows, apparently intrigued by that. Luke shifted in his seat and tapped his lips thoughtfully with his metal fingers. Then he lifted his hips, still seated, and pushed his pants down to his knees, exposing himself. Ben had to admit he hadn't expected that. The look on Luke's face said he hadn't, either. 

Ben went down on his knees on the floor and sat back on his heels with his thighs spread wide, and as Luke wrapped his hand around his cock, Ben wrapped one of his hands around his own. He wanted to ask Luke what exactly he thought they were doing, as they both sat there stroking themselves to erection, eyes glued to each other, moving over each other. But, as he squeezed the head of his cock, as he watched Luke do the same, all he managed to say in a strained, half-broken voice was, "Luke." 

Luke bristled at the sound if his name. His back stiffened, his thighs parted wider, he pinched his foreskin up over the head of his cock and Ben could feel the rush of Luke's emotions: shame and conflict washed over by desire, sharp and hot, radiating, filling the room, filling _Ben_ , making his nerves jangle. He stood. He went across the room to Luke and straddled his thighs there in the oversized chair that really wasn't oversized for this, one hand on the low back of it to the side of Luke's shoulder and the other still wrapped around himself. Luke sat back, looking up at him. He brought both hands up, over Ben's thighs, his hips, his chest, and Ben leaned in, shifting so he could catch Luke's cock in his hand along with his own, pressing them together. He stroked, Luke holding tight at his biceps. 

Then, abruptly, a knock on the door interrupted them.

The senator called, "Ben?" from the other side and she turned the door handle; in a horrified heartbeat or less, both Ben and Luke were holding the stupidly unlocked door closed tight with the Force, each with one hand outstretched toward it, but Ben still had both their cocks in his other hand, holding firm. They were still looking each other straight in the eye and Luke's emotions only intensified, all of them, even his desire, like he would have liked to have had him right then and there, maybe pushed up face first against the door, fighting to be quiet so that his sister wouldn't hear, or, then again, maybe not. Ben knew he would've let him do it, whatever he'd wanted to do. He could see Luke knew that, too. He could see Luke knew how dangerous that was.

"Ben, are you in there?" the senator called.

"I'm just getting into the shower," he called back. 

"Have you seen your Uncle Luke?"

"He's not in his room?"

"No. He didn't mention any meetings?"

"No, but I know he doesn't tell me everything." He shifted his grip around the two of them, wincing at how what he'd said had sounded. "He's probably just out walking."

She agreed vaguely then left the door and walked away and Ben used the Force to turn the lock behind her. He half expected Luke to say something sensible about how they should stop and he should go back to his own room and they should pretend that this had never happened, that none of it had ever happened, but he slipped his human hand down over Ben's and squeezed instead, clenching his jaw. 

It was like Luke was on the verge of something, right on the edge of something, a tipping point, a turning point, but _then_ he pulled back. He moved his hand away but that wasn't all; all of Luke's emotions were gone from the air in an instant, yanked back inside him with a sudden, massive force of will that Ben was pretty sure he'd never have himself, no matter how long he trained for. The loss was immediate and maybe it should have been sharp, precise, almost surgical, but it left him feeling gored, like his chest was gaping open, and he sat there raw and utterly bewildered for a second before he finally got it. He understood. Luke didn't have to say a word. Just like that, whatever they'd had was over. That was all it took.

"Oh," Ben said. "Oh." He smiled bitterly, feeling sick, feeling dizzy, a tilt to his vision that threatened to knock him straight down to the floor, but he stood and turned his back and walked away. Luke didn't stop him. He went into the bathroom, he closed the door, he locked the door, and once he'd started the shower and stepped in under it, he heard Luke creep away back to his own room. 

He didn't know what he'd expected to happen and it wasn't like they could have a relationship out in the open, at least not without relocating to an uninhabited planet or maybe somewhere on the far edge of the Outer Rim and even then, there was a chance they'd be found, and found out. Besides, Ben didn't even know if he wanted that. Life at the temple was hard enough sometimes and that was on a planet along a Mid Rim trade route, and that was without factoring in how it didn't make sense anyway. Yes, Ben had almost wanted the senator to walk in and find them there, but he wasn't stupid enough to tell her - that was just an idle thought, that he'd like to do it just to spite her. 

He washed, trying to tell himself he was washing it all away or pulling it all in like Luke had, so he could shove it all aside. Then he put on his clothes and he went to breakfast, almost as if nothing had happened at all.

Then, after breakfast, the senator mentioned she had a meeting to attend. The two Jedi escorted her. It saved them from being alone together.

Three men attacked in the square outside the senate, and Luke knocked them down, scattered them on the ground before they could actually fire a single shot or land a single blow. Ben wasn't impressed; he'd seen his fair share of senatorial assassination attempts and this ranked right down with the lowest. It bothered him, and as the senate police arrived, one of the attackers convulsed, foamed at the mouth and quickly died. 

"Stop them!" the police called, and Ben was closest to one of them so he tried, he really did, but he was too late to stop him. But, as he lay dying, the man pressed something into Ben's hand that he didn't need to look at to know was a datachip. The man looked at him, imploringly, and then he died, too. 

He should have told the police but he didn't. He slipped the chip into a pocket in his cloak and kept quiet because no one had noticed and he didn't trust the senate police as far as he could throw them, though he supposed he could throw them farther than ever now he'd had a little Jedi training. He meant to tell Luke, he really did, but they went up to the senator's office and the questioning began and they just didn't have an opportunity to talk so it wasn't until later, standing on the landing pad surrounded by a full senatorial security escort, that he even had a chance to think about it. 

"Take him away and keep him safe," the senator told Luke, like Ben wasn't even there. Then she hugged Luke and she hugged Ben and she turned and walked away, probably to reschedule the meeting that the attempt had interrupted. It was typical of her, choosing to take the risk herself but making the decision against risk for him, but he'd long ago stopped trying to argue his side of that case. It had never made a difference before, so he didn't expect it to start now. He guessed he shouldn't say if she'd wanted him safe she shouldn't have sent him to her brother.

They took off back toward the temple in the transport ship, Artoo beeping his concern, and Ben thought about telling Luke what had happened - in the end, he realized that moment had passed back on Hosnian Prime and it seemed a lot like _their_ moment had passed there, too. Luke was silent again, like he'd been before, and that was ten times worse than what had happened in the square, Ben thought, though he knew he shouldn't think that way and he'd be frowned at if he said it out loud. It wasn't that he'd hoped the assassins would succeed - he really didn't wish the senator real harm - but they hadn't even really come close to her at all. They hadn't been professionals or they'd have done some damage, Jedi or no Jedi. It was almost like they hadn't really been trying to kill her - he knew what that looked like because he'd seen more than a couple of serious attempts. 

Then it occurred to him: what if they _hadn't_ been trying to kill her? What if she hadn't been the target? But they hadn't got in close to anyone else, either. Except him. _Except him_. 

He watched the message on the datachip that night in his room in the temple, alone. He never did tell Luke that the senator wasn't the target. _He_ was. _Ben_ was. The chip was the first message he received from Snoke; three men had died to get it to him, so he took it seriously. 

"There will be an announcement," Snoke said. "Remember: your family knew all along."

\---

Training continued just like always over the days and weeks that followed, but Ben couldn't get the message out of his mind. 

He'd been training longer and harder than the rest ever since he'd arrived there, sun-up to sundown and sometimes more than that, till he was the strongest and the most skilled, though he guessed some of that was natural ability he'd inherited from his grandfather the Jedi Knight. Honestly, sometimes it was obvious how Luke hadn't had a teacher of his own for very long and he'd learned more from books and tales and holocrons than from Yoda or from Obi-Wan Kenobi, and maybe more than that from the Force itself or from his own intuition. Ben thought he could work with that, too. Luke didn't need to be there at all for him to progress. 

The problem was, Luke _was_ there. Luke was everywhere, in the dining hall at mealtimes, in the courtyard for their lightsaber practice, sometimes in the library where Ben went to be alone and even when Luke was there, he might as well have been alone for all the attention Luke paid him. Luke didn't even look at him and he wanted to go to him and _make_ him look. He wasn't sure he knew how, but thinking about it took his mind off everything else.

Weeks passed. A month passed and then two. Then the news finally broke and suddenly the message he'd been trying to forget made perfect sense. Before the others could react, at least not in Ben's direction, Luke ordered him onto the temple's transport ship. His actions were decisive; his words were authoritative; Ben couldn't help but admire him even when he resented him.

"I don't want to see her," Ben said, once they'd left the atmosphere, as they made the jump to hyperspace. 

"That's not where we're going," Luke replied. And neither of them said another word until they got there. Neither of them said another word until they were standing in a cave in the Unknown Regions, on a planet Ben would have called uncharted except that Artoo clearly had a chart somewhere in his systems. Luke lit up the cave with his lightsaber. The crystals in the long veins of kyberite shone. 

"It's time," Luke said, and Ben could feel the Force there, all around him, in him, in Luke, in the crystals all around them, _everywhere_. He understood what he had to do and so he picked one, taking his time with his eyes closed, one that almost jumped into his hand as he ran it slowly over the rough cave walls. 

"It's cracked," Luke said, when he showed it to him. 

"It's the one I want," Ben replied, not saying that the crystal almost seemed to want him, too. It seemed to know him, which was made even more confusing by the fact he wasn't even sure he knew himself. He'd grown up thinking he was one thing when he was really another; he'd always known that Bail Organa wasn't really his biological grandfather and that Anakin Skywalker was, but the truth of it was more than that. The truth was Anakin Skywalker hadn't been killed by Darth Vader - Anakin Skywalker _was_ Darth Vader. He'd killed so many people, not just individuals because there'd been _millions_ on Alderaan. He remembered going there to where the planet had been on a school trip once; he'd passed out from it and the other kids had made fun of him, even when their teacher explained Ben's grandparents had died there, but Vader had been the one who'd killed them. The scale of it was overwhelming, and he knew the crystal knew. When they left, he took it with him. 

It was hours before they spoke again, skimming through the atmosphere on their way back to the temple. Ben had the crystal in his hand and a frown on his face and he turned to Luke sitting there in the pilot's seat and said, "You knew."

"Yes," Luke replied, his eyes steady on the clouds that filled the viewport. 

"You didn't tell me." 

"Your mother made me swear I wouldn't."

It sounded a lot like a flimsy excuse but it also sounded a lot like the two of them - the senator too protective of her son to think that he might understand and Luke too noble and upstanding to ever break his word to her. They were so different and so alike. He wasn't sure if he was like either of them. 

"I understand if you're angry," Luke said.

"I'm not." 

Luke frowned at him. "Really?"

He shrugged. He really wasn't angry, he thought. For a start, he'd been prepared for something like this to happen by the message he'd received, even if Luke didn't know it, but honestly it also made a lot of sense. Vader had been strong with the Force, from what he'd heard, immensely powerful and feared. He thought maybe that was the same thing he sometimes sensed in Luke, like that first night in the bar, like he had it in him to do great and terrible things if he just let himself, but he wouldn't let himself. Maybe what he'd admired in him was the control to hold that power back, something Luke clearly had that Vader maybe lacked. Or maybe he just admired the power. Luke definitely had it. Sometimes he felt like maybe he had it, too.

"We're not like him," Luke told him, maybe even sounding confident about it, but Ben frowned at him, the crystal still in his hand. 

" _You_ are," he said. 

Luke was so hard sometimes, like the kyber crystal in Ben's hand that he was gripping so hard that its rough edges pricked his palm and made him bleed against it, into it. He started to wonder what it took to make kyber shatter.

He wasn't sure, but he thought maybe he enjoyed the way the hurt looked on Luke's face.

\---

When they got back to the temple, the others didn't try to shun him like he'd almost expected they would. He was pretty sure a couple of them were more interested in him then than they'd been before, in fact, but he could honestly say he had nothing to tell them - he knew no more about Darth Vader than they did. 

Time passed after that like it had before, training and meditation, tending the garden, cooking, mending clothes. Sometimes Luke sent them into town for supplies. Sometimes Luke sent them off offworld for training. The others started to defer to him. The others started to look up to him. Then there was the occasional night at the spaceport where he called himself Kylo and Luke called him that, too. The sex was brief and hard and sometimes barely worth the credits Luke spent on the room they did it in, but he wouldn't have given it up if he'd been paid to. He couldn't have - he knew because he tried to stop so Luke wouldn't have to stop it for him and that didn't take at all. It was worth it to see just those momentary glimpses of who Luke was underneath the calm veneer. Sometimes he wondered, after, aching and bruised, alone in a boarding house bed, if that was the part of Luke that took after his father. Maybe that was a family trait.

Snoke didn't seem to think so. More messages came, slipped into his pockets at the spaceport, pushed under his door or pressed into his hand on the rare occasions he was taken or else sent offworld. Snoke told him his grandfather's story in instalments: the fatherless slave on Tatooine, the Jedi Knight with the secret lover, the Sith Lord killed by his son or at least as near to that as made no practical difference. He told him how the Sith had planned to bring peace, albeit with an iron fist, and Ben could see a kind of logic in that because he'd seen so often growing up just how fragile democracy really was and just how often it could falter. Snoke told him his master couldn't be trusted and Ben laughed at that, bitterly, in his room alone once the message was done, because that was the one thing he'd already known. He could only rely on him to be unreliable. The Luke he'd met on Hosnian Prime was nowhere to be found there in the temple. 

He trained. Snoke told him things none of the library's books or holocrons had told him and he tried them in secret, in clearings in the woods around the lake, in his room after dark, in the temple's few abandoned spaces that they hadn't cleared for any other use just yet. Snoke told him he could channel his emotions into his lightsaber practice, that those emotions that he'd tried to hide could help and not just hinder him the way most Jedi had always thought. He called it Vaapad to make it sound palatable to Jedi ears, but Ben knew it was just plain Juyo - it was form seven, something he'd read about but that he'd never seen used, and sometimes it helped to focus him if he spent some time on it. Then he'd go back to his room and sit with his crystal in his hand and ask himself - and ask _it_ \- when he might build his own weapon and not just use a long-dead Jedi's. He hadn't even been able to find out whose it had been - all he knew was it wasn't his grandfather's, because he knew he would have known.

The night the idea finally came to him, Luke was offworld with the student from Mon Cala who seemed to spend half of every day swimming in the lake. Ben was meditating in the courtyard, under the stars with his crystal in his hand, or at least he was trying to. He really was trying to, but meditation had been turning steadily more difficult over the weeks and months since Hosnian Prime, since two years had been three, then edging closer to four. Sometimes all he could think about was how strong he felt in form seven. Sometimes all he could think about was the grandfather he'd never known. Sometimes, it was Luke instead, his smile and his cock and his bare skin. He'd never undressed all the way again after the trip to the senate. When they met, it was brief. When they met, they weren't much more than strangers. 

He was in the courtyard in the moonlight past midnight when he heard a noise that made his eyes start open, and when he reached out with the Force, he knew it wasn't any of the other students or Luke returning home. There were people there, inside the temple, several of them, careful but not careful enough, so he rose and he pocketed his crystal and he took the lightsaber from his belt. He slipped into the sleeping quarters and quietly woke three others, the most able ones, and they went out to meet the intruders. 

There were nine of them, wearing armour and carrying blasters, but that mattered very little against four Jedi. They deflected blaster shots easily, swept in, came at them hard, and three just fled within the first twenty seconds. The Nautilan and Zabrak students subdued one each and then another ran; Ben knocked one unconscious with the hilt of his saber while the Twi'lek whirled with hers. She was good but there were two of them with blasters and as she held one at the point of her sword, the other raised his gun and shot. The Twi'lek screamed and Ben ran her attacker through because, he thought, he didn't have another choice. He died on the spot while Ben's heart raced. 

It had been over for almost a full day by the time Luke and the Mon Calamari came back. The spaceport police had taken the intruders in - robbers, apparently, who'd heard there were valuables in the temple that people would pay good money for and the Jedi there weren't _really_ Jedi - and the Twi'lek was staying a couple of days in the local med unit half-submerged in a bacta tank until her wound knit back together. It had been almost a full day - it was night again and they'd all retired to their rooms. Then Ben's door burst open and there was Luke in the doorway. He'd felt him as soon as they'd landed, coming closer - he just hadn't quite realized he'd be coming straight to him. Luke had never set foot in his room before. He'd had no reason to think he'd start now. 

"So you heard," Ben said, sitting up. 

Luke closed the door behind him and then turned to him in the dark. Ben couldn't reach the light so he activated his lightsaber and set it on its hilt on the floor by his bed. It lit Luke up, all blue light and shadows. 

"I heard," Luke replied. 

"So you came straight back."

"I came straight back."

"Why?"

Luke clenched and unclenched his fists. Luke clenched and unclenched his jaw. He took out his own lightsaber, activated it and set it on its hilt on the desk. The colors clashed.

"They couldn't tell me who was hurt," he said, and the implication was clear: they couldn't tell him who was hurt, and he couldn't reach the temple, so he'd had to see if it was him. 

Ben pushed back the sheets and stood, barefoot and shirtless in a pair of loose, roughspun pants held up by a drawstring at his waist, the ones he liked to sleep in. He rubbed the back of his neck for a second, taken off guard, then he pulled the drawstring open and let the pants drop to the floor. He nudged them aside with the side of one foot, naked. 

"I wasn't hurt," he said, and he stretched out his arms, palms up, and turned a slow circle on the spot so Luke could see. All he had on him were scrapes from training and fading bruises like Luke's fingertips and as he turned, he felt the change in Luke, he felt the change in the Force. He could almost feel his eyes on him. He could almost feel his hands on him like a ghost of a premonition of a touch before he actually touched him. And he did touch him. Luke closed the gap between them in two quick, Force-assisted strides, slipped his fingers up into his hair and pulled him into a kiss that told Ben exactly what he thought of the situation. Luke blamed himself for not being there and was full of relief that Ben hadn't been hurt, and full of guilt that he was glad that it was someone else instead. 

Luke kissed him harder, walking him back toward the wall, and Ben kissed him back, roughly, enthusiastically, taking two handfuls of the back of Luke's robe. Luke's human hand twisted in Ben's hair and his metal hand wrapped around his cock, squeezed his balls, nudged back to rub at the stretch of smooth skin behind, so Ben hitched up one knee and rested his bare foot on the chair there next to him. Luke's mouth left his and he rested his head back against the stone wall behind him as Luke's teeth grazed his neck. He sucked roughly at his collarbone, pressed his mouth to his sternum, to the faint bruises over one side of his ribcage, the bruises at one hip. It was urgent, hard - he watched Luke go down on his knees, fully dressed, mouthing at his hipbone with his metal hand wrapped around Ben's cock, and then he looked up just for a second, his face just as flushed in the buzz of blue-green light as Ben could feel his own was. He could feel Luke's indecision, his desperation, his disgust, his need, and then Luke took him in his mouth. 

He licked him. He sucked him, no teasing to it, utterly straightforward, and Ben almost couldn't believe what he was watching Luke do to him. It felt good, it felt electric, and he wound the fingers of one hand into Luke's hair, made his eyes open and glance up at him for a second though that clearly hadn't been his intention and Luke's blue eyes on him in the odd two-tone light with his lips around his cock almost made him gasp and come, but somehow he didn't. Luke called the bottle of oil from his cloak, the one Ben had seen him use on his metal hand from time to time but it seemed to have some other uses; he slicked his fingers with it and Ben knew what he'd do next - he wasn't surprised when Luke's fingertips rubbed against his hole, when Luke pushed one of them into him, pulled it out, followed up quickly with two. And it was too much, Luke's fingers in him, pushed up right to the knuckle, Luke's mouth around him, sucking hard. He came in Luke's mouth, tight around his fingers, his muscles almost shaking with it. 

He watched Luke swallow, rub his mouth on the cuff of his robe and then stand. He watched Luke lean his forehead down, felt it rest against his collarbone, felt his hands at his hips, and then Luke pulled him down. He turned him around, pulled him down onto his knees, his hands and knees, nudged his knees apart and Ben did it willingly, his toes curling under for leverage because he knew exactly what was next. He heard Luke rearrange his robe and slick himself. He felt Luke push against his hole. Then he was in him, in one long, groaning thrust, in him base to tip with his clothed thighs pressed to Ben's bare ones. He fucked him, hard and deep and fast, erratic, his breath hitching, those hitches almost vocal, and Ben pushed back to meet him with jolts of pleasure that went straight to his cock because he'd never known Luke be like this. Luke wasn't quite out of control but he wasn't in it, either. He didn't have to be sensitive to the Force to feel that. 

Luke's hands raked over Ben's back and down to his hips. Luke's cock was in him, huge and hard and rubbing past the point in him with every rough thrust of Luke's hips that made his own cock start to stiffen again, sooner than he'd expected it could, but maybe that was the effect of the Force that felt like it burned between them. Luke's human hand went around him, stroked him, and it only took five or six strokes before he came again, against the floor, every muscle in him pulling tight, his thighs jumping with it, his skin tingling with it. And then that was it for Luke, too. Two, three last bucks of his hips and he came inside him, pushed in deep, his breath harsh even over the buzz of their lightsabers. 

After a long moment, Luke pulled back, slowly, groaning with it; he pulled out of him and sat back on his heels, still between Ben's calves. Ben pushed up to his knees, leaned back, and Luke shuffled closer till Ben's bare back rested against Luke's clothed chest. Luke's hands rested at Ben's thighs, his mouth at the nape of his neck, and Ben's fingers went around Luke's wrists. 

"If they'd hurt you..." Luke said, his voice low and raw and so close by his ear that it made Ben shiver. He left the rest unsaid but Ben understood because he felt it in him. He felt it rising up in the Force around them, in them, like that first night in the bar when Luke's power had turned heads but stronger this time, rougher, hotter. It made Ben's heart race. It made his stomach tighten. Luke would have killed them all if they'd hurt him; he wouldn't have been able to stop himself. He'd've tracked them down if he'd needed to and put his lightsaber through their chests or choked them with the Force till the life went out of them. The thought of what he could do, what he _might_ do, clearly terrified Luke. It thrilled Ben. 

Finally, Luke pulled away and stood, and Ben stood with him. 

"Stay the night," he said. 

Luke shook his head as he called his saber across the room and shut down the blade. The blue of Ben's seemed thin and cold without the green light mixed in with it. Then Luke looked at him. 

"Come with me," he said. So Ben pulled on his discarded drawstring pants and went with him. It wasn't a difficult decision.

He'd never been into Luke's rooms before, but Luke led him there. He left the lights off inside because the moonlight through the uncovered windows was enough to see by and Ben glanced around as Luke put down his cloak and took off his boots - it was almost as sparse a space as Ben's was, it just felt more lived in somehow, imprinted with a sense of its inhabitant. And that anger in Luke was still there but Ben could feel him pulling it in and pushing it down as he changed his clothes to something freer, looser, and it seemed like such a shame to him. Snoke had said the Jedi had barely even touched the real power they had inside them, largely out of fear, and in that moment Ben believed he might be right. 

Luke turned back the bedsheets and sat himself down. "Stay the night here," he said, looking like he hated himself for asking but like he didn't know how not to ask. So Ben crossed the room and went to him and lay down in Luke's bed. He closed his eyes. The back of his hand brushed against Luke's metal one.

"That first night, I didn't know who you were until it was already too late," Luke admitted, into the moonlight. 

"I knew who you were and I didn't care," Ben replied. Luke said nothing more, so Ben was silent, too.

Before they slept, he didn't tell him that he'd finished building his new lightsaber the night before, after the attack was over. He didn't tell him that when he'd activated it, the blade had crackled and glowed red. 

Luke wasn't like his father, but Ben had an idea. Luke just wasn't like his father _yet_. And if his plan failed, well, Ben was ready to follow in his grandfather's footsteps if he had to. Luke wouldn't be able to look away.

He'd been wrong, he thought: he didn't want to be like Luke. He wanted Luke to stop pretending. 

There was a lesson there, he thought: Luke treated him differently because he was scared to death of what he might do if he didn't.

\---

The first time he saw his old master after he did what he did at the temple - what he did _to_ the temple, it was just for an instant across a crowded room. Then he was gone again. 

Months had passed, maybe a year. He'd prepared for their next meeting in all the ways he could, holding what was left of his grandfather's helmet in his hands that Snoke had given to him once they'd met, but it still unsettled him. Maybe it shouldn't have but it did and he ordered the troopers under his command to tear the place apart until he was utterly convinced there was nowhere left Luke could be hiding. He could tell what the troopers were all thinking even if he couldn't see their faces because they might as well have broadcast it through the Force: they were thinking Kylo Ren had finally lost his mind and they'd have been better off with General Hux. And, over the weeks that followed, the more he thought about it, the more he thought they might've been right. By all accounts, Luke Skywalker had gone into self-imposed exile; he wouldn't be frequenting spaceport bars, at least not anymore. 

Then, a month later, there he was again. Another crowded room - a cantina on some no-name moon in the Outer Rim this time and not a spaceport bar, if he could have mustered the enthusiasm to make the distinction between the two types of establishment. Three weeks later, there he was again, and six weeks after that, again, _again_ , seemingly at random and never longer than a second or two, long enough to be almost sure but just not quite. After the first few times, he didn't send the troopers hunting. He reconciled himself reluctantly to the notion that either Luke was following him more effectively than anyone else in the galaxy could, or else he just wanted him to be. 

And then, another cantina. Another sighting, across a crowded room. He put his hand on the hilt of his lightsaber but then Luke was gone again and he cursed under his breath; he sent the glittering glass chandelier showering down on the room in all of its component parts and as customers shrieked and scattered, he felt a metal hand clamping down over his mouth and a human arm pulling him back. He didn't struggle. He knew who it was, after all. Luke wasn't going to hurt him.

Outside, in the alley behind the cantina, in the stinging rain with the hoods of their cloaks pulled up against it, Luke pushed him up against the wall. He was just as strong as ever but when he looked at him, his old master seemed more broken then than he did angry. Luke didn't ask him why he'd done it, he didn't ask him to come back, he just tugged at his cloak and kissed him desperately and Ben, Kylo, _Kylo Ren_ , couldn't help but kiss him back. He'd missed him. He was pleased to see him. He didn't exactly lack a certain desperation of his own. 

The found a room. They took off their rain-damp clothes. And after, Luke left and Kylo didn't try to follow. It wasn't because he didn't want to, but it was almost a relief that he couldn't. 

They've met so many times since then, over the years, all over the known galaxy and out beyond the bounds of commonly accepted maps and space routes. A man like Kylo Ren isn't exactly hard to find so Luke finds him, again and again, from Coruscant to Tatooine and out into unknown space. Luke doesn't wear his Jedi robes most times and his lightsaber is hidden by a long, black coat and sometimes Kylo says _black suits you_ because he likes the way Luke always scowls in response. Then they find somewhere to go, together. Just like they did tonight. 

Kylo Ren's lightsaber is hanging in the air above the bed, its glowing red blade lighting up the room like a kind of burning chandelier. He's not sure which one of them is keeping it from falling. Right now, he's not sure which one of them has the most control because what little they have left is so strained and tense. Kylo lacks Luke's capacity for focus; Luke lacks Kylo's capacity for truth.

"Do it," he says, and Luke knows what he means because he's already over him, the blunt head of his cock's already pressed against his hole, so he pushes into him, hard, deep, the way he wants him to, the way he thinks about sometimes even now. Luke fucks him slowly, bathed in the red glow of the precarious saber. Either one of them could end this idiocy right now but Luke can't; he still thinks his nephew can be saved. Kylo won't; he still hopes that Luke will join him. 

Sometimes they try to persuade each other. Luke looks appalled at the things Kylo says, about finishing Darth Vader's work, about doing that together, side by side, but Luke can't deny it when he says he's felt the dark side in him. When Luke says he could come back, rehabilitate, that everyone would understand that Snoke tempted him, that it wasn't his fault, Kylo tells him his eyes were wide open. When Luke says he must regret what he did to the others at the temple because the fact is he can't bear to say their names, he says he's wrong. When he says _you broke your parents' hearts_ , he says _I meant to break yours_.

Luke fucks him. He wraps his legs around Luke's waist and grabs the headboard for the extra leverage to lift his hips up higher, high enough to take Luke in a fraction deeper and make them both groan out loud with it. He's thinking of all the other times they've met, sucking Luke's cock in rented rooms above bars, fucking on their hands and knees in long-lost Jedi temples on worlds without names, pushing into Luke bent over tables in seedy backwoods boarding houses less because he wanted to than to see if Luke would let him. He thinks there's not much Luke wouldn't let him do these days. Every time they're together, he's tempting him more. 

Luke fucks him. The room's hot and their skin's sticky with sweat; Luke's hands slip against Kylo's skin and Kylo's slip against the headboard. The room's hot and the glow of the lightsaber above them makes it feel hotter, like they're burning up, and Luke's eyes are on him, blue made something else by the color of the light. Right now, he's the center of Luke's universe, but Luke hesitates to take it further and when Kylo comes, gasping, his body pulling tight around Luke's cock, he feels as much frustration as he feels relief. Seconds later, the look on Luke's face when he finishes inside him says he feels the same. 

"Stay the night," Kylo says, when Luke leaves the bed to dress. He can still feel Luke's hands on him. He'll be feeling that for weeks. 

"You know I can't," Luke replies, glancing back at him as he pulls on his shirt; Luke always says no, but he always looks like he has to fight to say it. He picks up his jacket and his belt, not a robe in sight. He dresses while Kylo watches naked from the bed, half-hurried like he can't make up his mind if he should stay or go, but they know know what he's going to do. His choice is always the same in the end.

Kylo stands. He deactivates his saber so Luke lights his instead, there in his hand, bright green and keenly familiar, and Kylo wants to hand him his instead and say _green never really suited you_. He can feel the anger in Luke, not even far under the surface, the anger at him for what he's done and the anger at himself for everything else. He blames himself. It consumes him. He regrets every time he touched him but not enough to make him stop. He regrets what Kylo's done, but not enough to kill him for it. He's Luke Skywalker, his uncle, his master, his lover, his _lover_ , the last shred of a thread that keeps him tethered to the light side, but all that means is Luke is tethered to the dark side, too. The Force is strong in their family.

Luke raises his free hand. Kylo knows what comes neck. They've been here so many times before that he really can't be ignorant of it. 

"Don't," he says, because he always says it, but Luke has never acquiesced. 

"You will wait here until morning," Luke tells him. "You will not follow me." And he doesn't even really need to try and they both know that, but Luke does him the courtesy of applying all his effort to it anyway, like they don't know at all. It shouldn't be so easy to cloud his mind and make him follow that order, except if that's exactly what he wants to do. They don't discuss that, either. 

Luke deactivates his lightsaber. The room goes dark. He feels Luke's hands at his waist, at his shoulders, cradling his jaw. 

"I love you," Luke says, his voice strained with the words because he means them, but it's much too little coming much too late. Even a few months ago, he might have been able to go back, but not now. It's been harder than he'd thought it would be, but all things that are worth something require sacrifice.

"I know," Kylo replies, but it's Ben Solo that Luke loves, not Kylo Ren. 

Luke kisses him. Luke turns and leaves, and Kylo won't leave until morning. He won't follow him. 

He knows people are looking for Luke Skywalker and he knows this because technically he's one of them. _Skywalker_ is the first name on Snoke's list because of who he is and what he is and what he represents - Skywalker is more of a threat because of the stories people tell about him, the legend he's become, than because he's a Jedi. He's not even really a Jedi, not like the old ones were, solid and purposeful and committed to the cause. He's alone, except for the nephew he can't seem to stop fucking. It should be so easy for him to make the change that Kylo wants him to, but he's still got one foot on another path.

Luke turns and leaves. Kylo won't leave until the morning, but he hopes one day they'll go together. And, if not, one day he'll find Luke and not the other way around. 

Either way, he'll be ready. He's learned his lessons well.


End file.
